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Tonight I made another recipe from the book French Women Don’t Get Fat, but this one was not as successful by far! I decided to make her Yellow Pepper Soup, exactly from the recipe – which is unusual for me. Despite the pre-recipe blurb not exulting the recipe and my hesitance to cook a soup without sauteing any onions or vegetables, I surged ahead. The recipe called for three yellow peppers, two fennel bulbs, a carrot, a potato, an onion, and a leek (my own addition – okay, it wasn’t a 100% strictly followed recipe, but I had a spare leek!) – which, as the photo below

Almost too many vegetables in one pot!

shows, fills a huge pot! It was so, so much soup…. After letting it boil and then simmering for 20 minutes in vegetable stock, I salted it and pureed it. I tasted the soup at this point, and it was disappointingly bland. Not terribly surprisingly, even with seasoning, but I expected the vegetables to at least give it a bit more flavor. Even though the finished soup looks delicious, I was pretty bummed. Next time I’ll make sure I saute the base vegetables well – as Ann Burrel says, “brown food tastes good!” – and have some stronger flavors and spices to make a good soup!! Maybe I could roast the peppers, also, I like I did for the red pepper soup I made previously. Oh well – I tried…

Yellow pepper soup, garnished with fennel fronds and pepper

My accompaniment was a bit of a disappointment as well, unfortunately. I decided to try popovers again, but they were less successful than last time. I didn’t have regular skim milk, but I did have goats milk (which I bought at Shoprite on a whim, having never seen it before – even though mom grew up on it). It ended up giving the popovers a strangely pungent taste, but not too strong. I realized that goats milk tastes exactly like goat cheese, except that it’s a liquid! Go figure, huh? At least I like goat cheese. Unfortunately, the popovers didn’t rise very much, even though I buttered the pans really well. Maybe I really do need a popver pan? Other causes might be that I didn’t have all the ingredients at room temperature, and also I didn’t slit the removed popovers right away like I should have. But in any case, they were crunchy and yummy…. Hmm, guess I need more practice with this!